If cartilage is assumed to be an osmotically active gel that is restrained from expanding by inextensible collagen fibers, one might expect that when load is applied to it, little compression would occur until the load equals the aggregate tension in the collagen fibers before the load was applied. I have not found this to be true: Alice Maroudas find that it is (see: for example, page 265 ff. in Adult Articular Cartilage. M.A.R. Freeman ed. Pitman, Tunman, Cambridge Wells, England, 1978). As the expected behavior might have been masked, in my 1962 experiments, by imperfect fitting of the loading plunger to the cartilage, I have been experimenting with a new apparatus in which load is applied by liquid that presses a thin rubber sheet against the cartilage.